Talent & Education

Closing the skills gap

May 04, 2014

North America

May 04, 2014

North America
Riva Richmond

Former editor

Riva Richmond is Director of Digital Media at The Story Exchange, a nonprofit digital media project that tells the stories of women entrepreneurs in articles and videos. Previously she worked as a Senior Editor with The Economist Intelligence Unit's Thought Leadership team in New York. She has reported and written about technology more than a decade, much of that time focused on information security and privacy issues. Prior to her current position, Riva was a freelance journalist writing for The New York Times, Entrepreneur.com, The Wall Street Journal and other national publications.

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Why read this report

  • 71% of executives surveyed say that increased employee loyalty and higher retention rates is a top incentive for investing in post-secondary education and training programmes for employees.
  • Concerns about return on investment are key obstacles to making investments in education; 61% of executives are held back by difficulties identifying institutions or programmes that are worthy, 56% by negative attitudes about ROI inside their company, and 51% by difficulty ensuring ROI.
  • 80% of executives say access to analyses of financial benefits would improve the chances that their company would invest in post-secondary education.
  • A majority of companies are willing to collect, analyse and share data to assess educational effectiveness and improve education and training programmes.

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